


Decorate

by MidnightMinx90



Series: Autumn AU's [3]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: AU, Autumn, F/M, Halloween
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-01
Updated: 2014-11-01
Packaged: 2018-02-23 10:48:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2544815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MidnightMinx90/pseuds/MidnightMinx90
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'me and my roommate decided to decorate our house for halloween but got really into it, and ended up re-enacting several scenes from nightmare on elm street so loud the neighbours called the police to investigate screams' au<br/>(Writer’s note: I haven’t seen any version of A Nightmare on Elm Street, so I swapped it with Alien)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Decorate

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place two years after Scarf

Jane had found the soundtracks from the Alien movies when they had been out shopping the day before, so she puts it on when they start decorating the apartment.  
A carved out pumpkin sits in the window sill, the gaping maw of an alien turned out towards the street. 

Her roommate and boyfriend, Garrus, is a turian originally from Palaven, and so he’s unaccustomed to Earth traditions and Halloween. He’s only been on Earth for two years, and she’d met him on one of the first days after he’d arrived. 

Garrus still has the scarf she gave him back then, and the memory makes her smile.

“What are you smiling about?” Garrus asks her, and she figures it might seem odd to him that she smiles as she stands there with a bloodied, severed latex arm she’s about to hang up.  
“Scarf,” she says, and he instantly understands; it’s a thing between them that no one else knows about.

“Good. I was worried you smiled about that creature emerging from an egg and jumping onto people.”  
For Garrus, naming the ancient films still seems odd; to her, he is an alien, and so is she to him. The aliens in the movies are vastly different of course, but Garrus is so used to calling all non-turian species for aliens, that he feels like calling creatures of fiction for something existing races are named it just, well, wrong.

Jane still swears to herself she’ll make him call the movies by their names someday, and even teach him the _correct_ names – because there is a _difference_ between Alien, Aliens, Alien 3 and Alien Resurrection.

“You mean the Aliens, Garrus.”  
“The Xenomorphs, yes. I did some research, and they seem a bit like the rachni the krogan fight; only the rachni won’t jump on your face and then use your body as a host. Then again, they got a lot worse after the Reapers merged with them and made them biomechanical.”

She’s heard of the rachni, and counts herself lucky she’s never run into any. Jane isn’t afraid of spiders – in fact she’s decorating with quite a lot of them in fake cobwebs around the apartment – but she is really glad they’re mostly extinct.

“Yeah, I heard about them from Grunt and Wrex. They’ve both told me about some of their fights with them, and even though I’m pretty sure Wrex tries to make them sound bigger and tougher than they actually are, I’m glad they’ve never been in this system.”

Garrus nods in agreement and walks into their bedroom for a moment. When he comes back, he’s carrying a small cardboard box and tells her to close her eyes and hold out her hands.  
Moments later, something is placed in her hands, something she can’t identify by touch alone, so when Garrus permits her to open her eyes, she almost squeals in delight.

He’s gotten her a facehugger plush, and Jane thinks that apart from accepting the scarf and his first cup of coffee (and moving in with her), this is the best gift Garrus has ever gotten her. 

Her smile is so huge it almost hurts, and she can see the happiness in Garrus’ eyes at her pleasure at the gift. He smiles back at her, and so she leans in to him, making him think she’s going to kiss him.

But as soon as his eyes are closed, she smacks the facehugger onto his face and laughs a loud, delighted laugh of glee and mischief. If Garrus’ view hadn’t been obstructed, he would have seen the look on her face and the way her eyes sparkles and he would have fallen in love with her all over again, just as he did when they met and he heard her laugh for the first time.

It’s something he’ll never tire off, and he’s vowed to himself that he’ll spend every moment with her making her happy and making her laugh; not only because she deserves it, but because without the sound of her laugh brightening his world, he would feel like a man in the dark, starving for light.

“Let’s see how well you remember, Garrus!” comes her excited voice from next to him. “Let’s re-enact scenes from the first movie; I’ll be the Alien! Here, take Ser Pounce-A-Lot, you can let him be Jones the cat!” She throws a plush cat to him and picks up the facehugger from where Garrus dropped it. 

They run around for what seems like only seconds, all thoughts of decorating gone, and with no care for the screams they make and what the neighbours will hear.

Turns out Jane makes more convincing screams, so they switch roles after a while. Garrus doesn’t want to switch at first, telling Jane in a low growl that he enjoys having her chase him.

“Oh come on, Garrus. You know I’m willing to do that any day. But I figured it would be more realistic to have you chase me around, seeing as you resemble the Aliens more than I do.” 

“You’ll pay for that, Shepard. Just you wait.”

Garrus chases her around the apartment, because even though he’s fast, she can jump over the furniture and avoid him that way. She screams as she runs and jumps, but the screams turns to squeals and then to other sounds as Garrus catches her and they fall down on the couch together.

Which is when the police barges in.

Apparently their screams have been a bit too convincing, and so the neighbours called the cops, as they were too worried and frightened to check what was going on themselves.

Neither of them knows what to do or how to react, and so they both start laughing, as everything about the situation just seems so strange and embarrassing.

They’re lucky, and get only a warning from the police – “Don’t do it again!”

As soon as the police are gone, Shepard turns back to Garrus, mischief and love in her eyes.

“So, how about that payback, Vakarian?”


End file.
